When Will Florida Address its Bear Problem?

There are bears running loose in my neighborhood; something that has gone from a curiosity to a serious nuisance… or worse. The mother is protecting her cubs and has no fear of humans. As I told the local news crew, someone is inevitably going to get mauled, or worse.

Calls to Florida Fish & Wildlife get you only happy talk (e.g. “don’t leave a bucket of honey in your driveway!”) and advice on how to live with bears. But I don’t want to live with them — I’m not on safari. The authorities are saying “Florida is Bear Country,” which as an excuse for inaction is kind of ridiculous: Florida is mosquito country too, but nobody is telling you it’s illegal to kill them, or advising you on how to scratch yourself more efficiently.

Yesterday one of the local news stations came to interview me and other neighbors about this increasing problem. Here’s a link to the story, which aired at 10 p.m. on January 4. Couldn’t embed it, sadly.